


Reversal

by angerwasallihad



Series: Behind the Curtain [9]
Category: Major Crimes (TV)
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Flashbacks, Gen, Mother!ship, internal affairs - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 13:55:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3136862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angerwasallihad/pseuds/angerwasallihad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Internal Affairs" tag. Sharon remembers it all. The good, the bad, the ugly. In which certain roles within the present moment are reversed, and Sharon is plagued by old verses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reversal

**Author's Note:**

> Well here we are again. Another long one. Because of all the feelings. There is a play-on-words happening here that is pretty shameless, but I couldn't resist. Enjoy!

Reversal

3x17 “Internal Affairs”

 

Sharon wasn’t mad. She wasn’t just angry. She was irate. The sort of red-hot anger that only Jack brought out. The sort of rage that made even breathing normally next to impossible. She was not upset that he had been drinking. That, she was merely mad about. No, she was furious that Jack had all but broken into her home for Rusty, of all people, to discover.

 

“I won big, forty thousand dollars. And it’s uh… It’s in an envelope somewhere…” He was slurring and looking confusedly around the sofa.

 

He was gambling, too. Her face betraying her horror and disappointment, she heard a small voice in the back of her head, whispering ominously. This is because of the divorce. It’s your fault.

 

Immediately, she pushed that thought back. Decades of words to the contrary floated to the surface, including her own and Rusty’s recent words.

 

_“It sounds like her on the phone, I know, but that’s her addiction talking. Not your Mom.”_

_“Do you know what ‘enabling’ means?”_

_“I am not responsible for your drinking!”_

_“Nothing she’s done has a thing to do with you.”_

 

Her eyes met his across the room, the shock and urgency clear on her face. Sharon did not know what she was looking for in his face, or even that she was looking for something. Not until she saw it there in his eyes.

 

Looking back down at her ex-husband in fury and disbelief, she threw more angry words at him. “You can’t honestly think that I would take money that you won gambling!”

 

Jack groaned, leaning back over to rest his head on the sofa in seeming despair. “That tone, that awful tone!” His eyes drifted shut, and he was still.

 

Sighing heavily, Sharon stared down drunken mess before her. It had not always been this way. In the beginning, it had even been wonderful.

 

_Sharon knew people who reinvented themselves in college. Came up with completely new identities in a place where no one could prove her wrong. Her father had even encouraged her to consider it. But she could not quite get her head around the idea of starting her true adult life with lies. It was not something she could bring herself to do._

 

Getting to her feet, she launched into furious activity, gathering the three empty bottles and single wine glass into her arms, breathing heavily as she tried to get rid of them as quickly as possible.

 

As she moved away from Jack, Rusty began speaking quickly and earnestly. “Sharon, look, I told you--just go on back to work, and I can handle this.”

 

_So two and a half years in, she was still who she had always been; organized, quiet, and determined. The classes were small enough that the professors knew her by name, but large enough that she wasn’t singled out. There were a few too many people living in the tiny apartment she shared with several friends for Sharon’s taste, so the library became her quiet place._

 

Coming around the couch, avoiding his eyes, she shook her head as she spoke vehemently in reply. “Rusty, you should NOT have to deal with this.” Of all people, she nearly added. That was the entire reason he had come to her. So that he would absolutely not have to clean up after alcoholic adults. This was her mess.

 

_BANG._

_Well, it had been her quiet place._

Rusty scoffed at her as she entered the kitchen. “This? This is nothing!” He exclaimed in disbelief. “My Mom used to bring home guys ten times worse than Jack.”

 

Trying very hard not to think about what exactly he meant by that, she shook her head in near-denial. “That does not make me feel better!” Sharon stepped on the pedal of the trash can angrily. “If I had known that he was drinking, I would have had those locks changed.” Dropping the bottles into the trash one at a time, none-too-gently, and dropping the wine glass in the sink unceremoniously, she shook her head in rage and frustrated incredulity at both Rusty’s words and the memory flowing before her eyes unchecked.

 

_Loud, maniacal laughter echoed through the stacks and she looked up in irritation at the interruption. A small group of young men were pelting towards her between the bookshelves, pursued by an unamused librarian. The leader of the pack, a tall and not unattractive student that she recognized from a class or two but could not exactly put a name to, stopped short in front of her and her table, realizing he was at a dead end. A flicker of recognition passed between them, but she could not quite place him._

“Look, Sharon, he-he’s not violent,” Rusty said intently.

 

Sharon spun at the last word, once more resolutely ignoring what sort of experience her son might have with violent drunks. That was precisely why he should not have to deal with this. She stepped back from the kitchen to stand in front of Rusty, still breathing rather heavily in her fury.

 

_Falling to one knee dramatically before her as the librarian caught up, he called out loudly to her, “Oh, fair maiden! Save us from this wild beast!” His cronies all guffawed appreciatively, falling to their knees as well in a gesture of would-be pleading._

_Unamused, Sharon fixed the leader with a cool stare for a long moment before wordlessly turning back to her work. The rest of the boys all cackled and began making sounds and gestures of amusement at their comrade's reception._

 

“When he wakes up he’s going to be in terrible shape,” Rusty continued insistently. “And Julio needs you right now.”

 

Sharon found she still could not bring herself to look at him. She had not given him the home  that she had promised him. She had failed him in the worst way; put him back in a position of taking care of an alcoholic adult. And she was not sure she could ever forgive herself for it, as the images from all those years before continued to accost and distract her.

 

_The librarian, finally coming to stand by the group, glowered, pointing coldly back the way they had come._

_“Out. Now.”_

_“But my fair maiden--!”_

_The woman looked from him back to Sharon._

_“--does not seem to be distressed at your imminent departure.”_

“Do you really wanna be sitting here watching Jack sleep it off?” Rusty wasn’t giving up on it.  “Because we’re family now, Sharon.”

 

Her eyes finally came up to his face at those words.

 

“We can split emergencies. I mean, did I not--did I not do the right thing by taking his keys and coming to you?”

 

He was right. They were family now. But that was the point, wasn’t it? Being part of this family meant that this was not part of his life anymore. It was never his job to take care of her problems. That was not something she could live with.

 

_As he was chuffed back down the aisle towards the door, he continued to shout streams of English poetry in her direction meaningfully._

_“There she weaves by night and day/ A magic web with colours gay/ She has heard a whisper say/ A curse is on her if she stay/ To look down to Camelot.”_

 

But he was right. She could not be everywhere at once. And Rusty was not a fourteen-year-old avoiding the fists of his mother’s drunken boyfriends. He was so much more than that now. And Jack may be many things, but violent had never been one of them. Of that, Sharon was sure.

 

“Okay, but you tell me exactly what you will do when he wakes up.” She stepped back around the sofa, reaching for Jack’s keys on the coffee table. Deliberately ignoring the splash of wine on the table and the nauseating smell of the man snoring on the couch, she turned back to Rusty as he replied.

 

“Okay, I will help him eat, I will talk to him a little bit, I will give him back his stuff, and…” He looked earnestly at her, an attempt to reassure. “Okay, if he does get ugly?” Sharon was standing before him once more, Jack’s keys in hand. “I can outrun Jack, no problem.”

 

Once again, Sharon resolutely pushed aside the images of how and why Rusty would immediately think of outrunning adult men.  

 

_Looking determinedly at her work without really seeing it, hoping not to encourage his antics, she fought back a smile. She remembered how she knew him. He had all but torn apart her self-professed favorite poet in that pre-modern English poetry course she had taken her first semester. It was George… or Jack, maybe? He had infuriated her, whoever he was._

 

_But perhaps had changed his tune about Tennyson._

“Will you please let me do this one thing for you, please?”

 

With a heavy sigh, Sharon finally gave in and pressed Jack’s keys deliberately into Rusty’s outstretched hand. Still unwilling, however, she held his gaze intently and firmly as she spoke.

 

“You call me, if you need me, immediately.”  

 

Rusty nodded energetically as he palmed the keys. “I absolutely, absolutely will.”

 

_“Theirs not to make reply/ Theirs not to reason why/ Theirs but to do and die/ Into the valley of Death--”_

 

Without warning, he pulled her into a tight hug, and she relaxed ever so slightly and whispered in his ear, now pressed close to her face.

 

“I love you.”

 

He pulled back and met her eyes again. “I love you, too. and--don’t worry.”

 

“Okay.” Still not entirely sure that this was the right thing, she turned away and headed to the door, calling sarcastically over her shoulder to Rusty. “Good luck.”

 

_“--Rode the six hundred,” Sharon finished in a whisper, finally looking up, unable to help herself. A little half-smile on her lips, their eyes met for a brief moment and he winked before the librarian had forced him back around the corner._

 

 

* * *

 

 

As she caught sight of him lurking in the doorway, the hurricane boiled in her again. Storming wordlessly past him, she shook her head against another memory threatening to settle. In the hallway, she turned sharply to face him and waited, the cloud of her face hiding the crashing rage and hurt within.

 

_Her mother had wanted a big church wedding back in Connecticut. Every distant relative, the enormous Catholic ‘do with tulle everywhere and absolutely everything she and Jack did not want. They’d given into the church and a certain amount of fanciness, but Sharon had put her foot down at a hundred and fifty guests, and negotiated an LA wedding instead._

 

Slowly, intently, Jack began to speak in that tone she knew so well. “I’m sorry. Everything I did was absolutely stupid, and I want to apologize, both for the inconvenience, and especially for the incivility.”

 

_There was tulle and pink everywhere despite Sharon’s protests. But the bride reflected in the mirror was simple. Elegant. At twenty-four, she could not justify an extravagant dress she would only wear once. Instead, the dress was simple; white, with a hem that hung no lower than mid-calf, it had short sleeves with a modest neckline and the smallest petticoat Sharon could manage. She had found it with her sister Julie in a vintage boutique for a steal. The line and cut was flattering, and very 1960s-esque._

Sharon nodded at his words. They were the same words she had heard over and over for years. It had been a long time since last he spoke them, but they were always the same. And like always, she thought maybe he meant them.

 

_Sharon stared at her reflection for a long moment, her mother and sisters bustling around behind her, smoothing unnecessarily and fussing with her hair. She did not really care about the wedding itself. She did, but not the way her mother did. She cared about the future that lay ahead. The one so different from what she had imagined just a few short years ago. As her sisters tore her away from the mirror and out toward the church doors, her mind wandered to the children she might have. The new and beautiful house they had bought. The job she was coming to love._

 

Keeping her voice steady, calming the storm of anger but not quite the thundering grief, she spoke with as little heat and emotion as she could muster. “Okay.” She was quiet, but stern.  “And I hope that you will work your way back to sobriety, because what I saw earlier will not fly with Ricky and Emily.” Sharon’s eyes bored into his intensely, refusing to break the line between them. As she stared, the ghost of a look so long ago filtered in, marked with pride instead of shame, joy instead of the dejection she can’t ignore.

 

_As the music swelled and the guests as one rose to her feet, Sharon’s eyes found his at the end of the long aisle. He looked spiffier than she could have imagined. His eyes twinkled as he mouthed something to her._

 

Finally, Jack nodded, and Sharon’s gaze relaxed. Her face turned from his, no longer sure she could maintain the cloudy facade keeping the storm in check.

 

“Yeah, I, uh… Matter of fact, after I leave here I’m going to an AA meeting.”

 

Her eyes snapped back to his, not yet sure if she really believed him.

 

“And there’s this.”

 

He pushed a bulky envelope at her insistently, almost hopefully. Like he had so many times before after a big win. And like she always did, she pushed it back at him with a hum of dissent and a shake of her head. She still could not look at him long, the shell of the man before her now not at all the one she remembered loving.

 

_She was still too far away to make his words out as she slowly walked towards him. The soft smile on her face did not hide the quizzical look in her eyes as he continued to mouth at her._

 

“Not gambling money.” His eyes pleaded with her. “No, it’s money I won in the settlement against the LAPD. And I know it’s not nearly what I owe you,” Jack continued quietly as her eyes once again drifted away, unable to watch him. “But it’s honestly-got, and…You deserve it.”

 

At those last words, Sharon’s face came back to his. She felt the cloud on her face shifting, threatening to dissipate and flow down her cheeks.  

 

_Finally, about ten feet away, she understood._

 

“Use it for our kids,” He whispered. “And I really hope you’ll consider to…see me again one day soon, when I’m in better shape.”

 

Sharon knew his spiel so well now, like a dance that came back to her feet without thought. She held his eyes for one last moment. “We’ll see. Take care, Jack.” She turned and walked away, slowly this time. The storm was gone, its memory threatening to pour down her face at last.

 

_Doubt thou the stars are fire;_

_Doubt that the sun doth move;_

_Doubt truth to be a liar;_

 

As she passed, he called after her once more, voice shaking with his own tears.

 

“You too. And Sharon? I’m so sorry.”

 

Sharon stopped at his words, knowing the cloud of her tempest no longer shielded her face. He would see it, smell the falling drops like rain on a suddenly stormy day. She swallowed hard, willing it not to fall. Not yet.

 

_Even with him now, smiling, she whispered, “But never doubt that I love.”_

 

And she turned.

 

“I’m so sorry...that I took so much for granted.”

 

Sharon held in the tears that Jack could not. She held in the grief, the memories of happier times, the innumerable moments just like this one, the cold that made her shiver in July. She held it all in clenched fists as Jack crumbled before her, the shattered bits of their life scattered between them, jagged and sharp. Sharon stood tall, refusing to crumble, refusing to shatter, refusing to let the rain fall. As she always had done.

 

_Taking his hand in hers as they came to stand before the priest, she cut her eyes over to him in a look he knew too well._

_“What?” He whispered so softly only she could hear. “Tennyson isn’t exactly wedding appropriate.”_

 

Until finally, she turned and walked away, leaving it all behind.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The drive home was quiet, uneventful. Save for the ghost of her past riding in the passenger seat. Her knuckles were white on the steering wheel for the entire drive, still refusing to let exhaustion or grief take her.

 

When she pushed open the door of the apartment, the smell of something cooking immediately collided with her face. And she almost smiled.

 

Almost.

 

“Hey,” she called out as she closed the door and stowed her keys and purse in their places by the door.

 

She started towards the kitchen and the sound of clinking plates when she heard Rusty’s “Hey,” in response. Rounding the corner, she saw the table set for two and her son setting two plates on the table.

  
  


“What’s all this?”

 

He smiled, putting a pair of water glasses on the table now as well. “Nothing much. Just leftover chicken. And some green beans I found in the fridge. And some strawberries.”

 

Sharon steadied herself on the back of the couch as she stepped out her shoes slowly.

 

“You didn’t have to do that.” She stepped toward the table to sit. “Especially after what you did already.”

 

He shrugged. “I figured you needed it. After the couple of days you’ve had.”

 

Rusty came just behind her, reaching in to supply a napkin and some silverware, his arm extending into the space directly beside her right hand on the table. Placing the contents of his hand next to hers, she felt him pause behind her. Then, before she had done more than noticed the silverware next to her, both of his arms came around her shoulders from behind, his head coming over the back of the chair and her shoulder to rest his own cheek against hers, hands clasped over her torso.

 

Taken slightly by surprise, she smiled at last, leaning into the embrace and patting his clasped hands with one of her hands, his exposed cheek with the other, swaying a little on the spot. She held on for a minute in silence before releasing his hands and face and whispering, “Thank you.”

 

He did not reply, merely came around to sit across from her as she watched wonderingly. They ate in silence for several minutes. It was not uncomfortable or awkward, just familiar.

 

Finally, Rusty looked over at her, mostly pushing the food around on her plate unhappily.

 

“So, is Julio going to be okay?”

 

Sharon set her fork down in defeat, pushing the plate away as she replied. “Yes. I hope so.”

 

They sat in silence again for a few more minutes, Sharon mostly watching as Rusty ate, her own plate generally untouched. It was strange and beautiful, the way the events of the day had left him unscathed. And she thought again about what she could possibly have done to deserve him in her life.

 

Rusty got to his feet and started to clear away their plates swiftly, not commenting on her nearly untouched dinner. As he pulled it toward him, she put a hand on his arm to stop him.

 

“Hang on, honey. You don’t need to do that.”

 

She pushed him back to his seat, and set the stack of plates and silverware aside, looking over at him intently, moments long past with Jack swirling to the surface again, even as she looked gratefully into her son’s face.

 

_He was always sorry in the beginning. For years, she came home to flowers and poetry.Sonnets as apologies. At the bottom of the bottle, he was all daggers and teeth, reappropriating those verses of inspiring storytelling into one of cutting hate._

_Into the jaws of Death_

_Into the mouth of Hell_

_Rode the six hundred_

 

“I really appreciate your help with…” they both glanced over at the couch as one, echoes of the previous night resounding between them. “...Well, with all that,” she finished. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but she shook her head. “No, not yet. You,” she continued quietly, the rain threatening again, “should not have to handle situations like that. And I won’t ever ask you to.”

 

_But in the morning he was all tears and beauty, a bouquet without flowers, with words not his own. Never his own._

_My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground_

_And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare_

_As any she belied with false compare._

Rusty let out an exasperated sound and finally spoke. “Okay, Sharon, but like, no. That’s not how this works.”

 

Sharon blinked, but did not protest.

 

_Unable to speak of his hate himself, Jack stole from what he knew she loved._

_A still small voice spake unto me,_

_“Thou art so full of misery,_

_Were it not better not to be?”_

 

“You have gone out of your way to make me part of this family. Because I am, now. So you don’t have to do it all by yourself.” Glancing over at the couch again, he continued. “If it had been you, and you had come home to find my--” He stopped, stumbling a little in his search for the right words. “--well, her like that, you would have done the exact same thing, okay? So stop apologizing.”

 

Sharon’s eyes misted slightly, and she sighed.

 

_He was always sorry._

 

_From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;_

_For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings_

_That then I scorn to change my state with kings._

 

“Alright,” she said at last. She got to her feet slowly, hands full with their dishes. “But I’ll take care of the clean-up. It’s been a long couple of days. You go on.” She nodded with her head for him to leave her with the dishes, and reluctantly he started to move. “Good night,” she called after him as he headed down the hall. “Love you.”

 

_When he missed their anniversary, sleeping it off in a bar bathroom._

_Let me not to the marriage of true minds_

_Admit impediments. Love is not love_

_Which alters when it alteration finds,_

_Or bends with the remover to remove._

He waved over his shoulder without looking back. “Love you, too.”

 

_When he gambled away Emily’s college fund._

_Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,_

_And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;_

_And every fair from fair sometime declines,_

_By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;_

_But thy eternal summer shall not fade_

_Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest._

She heard Rusty’s footsteps pause in the hallway as she turned on the faucet, letting the water run over his plate in the sink. She waited for him to come back, to say something more. But he didn’t.

 

_When finally, he disappeared into the night, he left her only with Tennyson’s words._

_Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,_

_Tears from the depths of some devine despair_

_Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,_

_In looking on the happy autumn fields,_

_And thinking of the days that are no more._

 

A few minutes later, when the dishes were done and she could hear Rusty in the shower, she crept quietly back to her bedroom closet and reached for something on her top shelf. Lifting it down, it was heavy, but not at all unused in her arms.

 

As quietly as she could, she padded back out to the living room with it, stopping only for a jacket and slippers as she heard the shower turn off behind her. Sharon slipped out on to the balcony silently, leaving the sliding door only slightly cracked. She pulled a lighter from its place beside the grill and pulled the top open with a creak before dropping the thick hardback book into the bottom, with assorted ashes and charred bits. The lettering on the spine glinted up at her one last time before she dropped a few twisted rolls of newspaper kindling on top.

 

_The Complete Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson._

 

She shook her head, thankful at last that it was no longer teeming with the memories she had not been able to shake. Lifting the lighter and flicking it on, she lit the mass of paper in the bottom of the grill.

  
Sharon watched intently as the flames began to slowly consume the pages. And at last, she let the rain fall.

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts? I want to hear them!


End file.
